Being a city planner isn't easy. You need to balance out the needs of your citizens for green spaces, living accommodation as well as offices and industry. You also have to ensure the infrastructure allows everyone to get around easily, without taking over. With that in mind, we went ahead to collaborate on the design of Sprawlopolis by Button Shy.
If you've been following me for a while, you'll know how much I like small box games. From wallet games to mini mint games to mint tin games to Oink-sized games to a deck of cards to any game that you can repackage into a smaller box and take with you anywhere. The other thing I like are games that are very quick to teach and learn and very quick to play, but still provide a lot of fun and excitement and many small box games provide exactly that. So in this article, I want to discuss why small and quick games are sometimes the better choice than big, heavy and long games.
As someone who has a slightly addictive character, collecting pretty much anything comes quite easy to me. "You never know when you might need it again," is what I tend to say. The same is true for board games, of course. "We might play this again at some point," is how I justify not letting a board game go that I haven't played in months. So, in this article, I want to talk about how I overcome my own excuses to keep my board game collection to a manageable size.
I was ready. It seemed like an impossible task, but I was mankind's only hope. I had to do what I could and fight my way through the ever-increasing number of machine parts, which were making the machine stronger and bring it closer to sentience. It was a matter of taking it one machine part at a time until I reached the core and was finally able to put an end to the Doom Machine by Nathan Meunier.
We had all the plans ready, planning permissions had been sought and approved, contractors had been signed up, the project manager was ready and a rough schedule had been put together. We also knew what building materials we needed and where to get them, so it was time to build our Micro City by Thistroy Games.
The seasons began again. We had to build our rice paddies, fill them with water, plough them with our buffalos, plant our rice and wait for it to grow. We had to be clever about how we divided the land to make the best use of the most fertile soil. We also had to have enough help to get the harvest in, but overall, we had to be patient and wait for the end of the Seasons of Rice by Button Shy.
Living in the country is nice, but getting to work requires a car. In fact, getting anywhere needs a car: shopping, going out (unless it's to the local at the edge of the village), seeing friends (because even though you pretend to, you don't actually get on with your neighbours) and doing the school run. On the other hand, because it's so hard to get around, we don't actually spend as much on things, which is good. However, there is a lot we need to do if we want to make sure our household leaves only a Tiny Footprint by Gaard Games.
Your 8-bit computer may seem to be collecting dust in your loft, but actually, there is still a lot of life in the old box yet. Two of the microprocessors, Mikro and Chip, are keeping themselves amused by playing little, fun games. After all, their buffers and memory stacks are still in working order. With a handful of assembly instructions, they keep each other entertained: push, pop, peek as well as some Mini Memory Mischief by Atikin Games.
With a loud "Bang!" the head flew off, followed by a "leg-splosion" that severed both legs, leaving only the body and the left arm. It wasn't pretty. Yet, you knew you could turn it all around. There were still plenty of options. You just had to duck and dive and try and swap body parts with another robot to boost your own. You were sure that in the end you would be a Bots Up.
As many of you probably know, I only have limited space for games. That's why I very much like small box games that have a lot of gameplay crammed into a small volume. It's also the reason why I have been reboxing games that come in bigger boxes, compressing them down and getting rid of all the extra air that came with the original packaging. I have written about this in my article "Box clever?" a couple of years ago, and this time I want to give you some concrete examples of small box games crammed to the brim and larger box games that I have shrunk down.
